With the granddaddy in the field of creative nonfiction.

Exciting news! Creative Nonfiction Magazine — the seminal magazine in the genre — has taken me on as a first reader! I’ve already plowed through ten submissions and I’ll tell you this:

1, Many were good enough reads but not good enough to publish.

2. Moving a sentence right along is only the first step to being a writer. The primary quality seems to be the ability to craft story.

3. It was clear that many of the writers wrote out their story and then polished it. It did not seem as if any of them looked for where the story really started — sometimes as much as half-way through the essay.

Note to you writers out there: never be afraid to chuck half of what you’ve written one you’ve found where the story begins.

“Daan” means road in Filipino. I didn’t speak Filipino. I learned daan from the guy who checked me in. There was a big damn daan just outside the guesthouse.

The trucks up and down it drove me crazy, but I was afraid to go out. It was one thing to run away from a father that was messing with you. It was totally different to be on your own, half-way around the world, expected to begin your new life.

…

Dark flash fiction with a slice of humor.

Nucca was shopping in town the morning the sea came in. There was no eldest son to arrange her funeral rites,no daughter to moisten her lips for The Water of the Last Moment. The chauffeur undertook the ceremony. Next, the maid stuffed Nucca’s every orifice with cotton. The maid and…

Block happens when the writer doesn’t know what comes next.

1. Write a part of the story that you know.

Don’t force yourself to write what comes next. You could write a scene, or a narrative of the plot that you will later turn into scenes — or plunge in right away, should the muse strike as you work.

2. Record yourself talking about the story and then write it exactly as you spoke it.

You…

In November of 2002, Leonard Nimoy put The Spock Pinch on the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. In a controversy reported as far away as England and parodied on Saturday Night Live, Nimoy canceled his commitment to speak at the so-called Fed’s fundraiser. …